The tour of our friend’s new house was making its way back
to the rest of the party when we stopped halfway down the stairwell. This tall, wiry fellow was
standing in our way, seemingly as part of his plan. It was the same guy from
earlier in the evening, the one who’d made a comment toward Emily that could be
taken as eccentric, hilarious, or creepy from different angles. He continued to
chat us up, relaxed yet intense, with these occasional off-the-wall remarks. I
thought they were hilarious. Emily? The way she restrained a smirk while giving him the side-eye suggested she was either unsure of him or embarrassed to be
amused. It took a few hours, but once she started responding back, it became
clear that this guy was winning her over.
When Emily went to the kitchen with a friend, the guy leaned
toward me and asked, “So, are you two affiliated?” I thought it was a quirky
way of asking if we were dating. Quirky but memorable… you know, I guess that
could summarize Jon and that whole encounter. I told him we were not an item,
which gave him the green light to ask for Emily’s num--
“Oh, I’ve heard this part before,” Jenny interjected,
willing to amuse me nonetheless as I completed the story.
The start of Jon and Emily, two friends I was about to
visit, was familiar to Jenny. She probably first heard the story before we
attended their wedding eight years ago. I’ll bet she’s heard the tale of their
beginning at least five or six times. She’s used to me repeating stories. Call
me (insert mediocre 90s sitcom you like more than you admittedly should),
because I’m always on rerun.
The details of my friends’ first encounter weren’t even
important at the time I was sharing them for the fifth sixth Nth occasion. I tell my wife passages like that all the time, sometimes in passing, sometimes
to reshape a story with new information, sometimes using context to express a
different sentiment, sometimes just because I like to share things with her.
I could apply a lot of that last (run-on) sentence to what
it was like writing in this blog.
My dissertation defense was a long time coming. Although the
project was completed in 2014, the idea originated seven years prior… give or
take a month from the time this blog was last updated. I’ve written a lot in my
area of study in that time. It’s funny, though: when it comes to me and
“publishing,” I don’t just think of the sexual violence research. I reminisce
on my writing prior to this, when I’d sit at a computer writing boxing articles
from my bachelor apartment. I’ll say this: my area of research may be
controversial among the general public, but I’ve never been called anything
like “half breed hack” from someone reading my academic writing. Not to my
knowledge, at least.
I experienced plenty of stumbling blocks along the way to
completing my dissertation. I was regularly exhausted by a surly, ever-critical
colleague who put it upon herself to judge my intentions before “allowing” me to proceed. There was the day I felt that fizzy head dizziness when I’d
discovered that not only had my flash drive been corrupted, but also I’d been
incorrectly backing up my research database (I’m savvy with computers like my neurotic dog is savvy with boxes blocking his way into a room). The biggest obstacle,
though, was Mr. Procrastination. Putting things off a week was more the
indirect roadblock. The momentum I lost by getting distracted by things like
my clinical cases, deciding what Jenny and I should do to add to our (metaphorical) memory scrapbook, and checking IMDB
to confirm which actors from a decades-old movie are now dead hurt my efficiency and really
slowed me down.
Despite all the inevitable adversity, the day came for me to
defend my years-long work to a small room of scholars and colleagues. I usually
feel anxiety in anticipation for a big event by overthinking various scenarios,
but I was unusually calm that day. Scratch that: I was unusually calm until I forgot the most up-to-date version of my defense and had Jenny
scrambling for it in an adjacent building 10 minutes before showtime. Whatever:
I’d been calm long enough to be well-rested and eat a sandwich, so I had enough
fuel to get me through.
The details of the actual defense are a blur, but the aftermath
was very vivid. I stood outside the door pacing with Jenny, well confident of the outcome but antsy to have this all just come to its proper conclusion.
She looked proud of me. In most situations that’s good enough for me… but I
wanted that Ph.D., and my university did not include an awesome woman’s pride
in the prerequisites for my degree. About ten minutes later, my advisor waved me
into the room and looked over with a smile. She offered a nod of respect, shook
my hand, and referred to me as “Dr.” to indicate I’d achieved my longtime goal. For all intents and purposes, I’d be able to call myself Dr. the next day, once I deposited my
completed dissertation and filled out the proverbial paperwork.
When everything was finalized that next day, I was alone in
a room with an administrative person I’d never met before and probably will
never see again. I don’t really remember the moment it became official, but I
remember what happened immediately after.
I stood up, walked toward the exit, and stumbled head first
into the door.
I’d pushed on a door with a large, unambiguous “Pull” sign.
It’s the kind of blunder you would normally edit out of a
key moment, but it was quite the visual to me. I knew immediately that this was
what I’d remember best about that event. To fail to properly use a door
immediately after receiving your Ph.D.: it was an imperfect ending that felt
quite fitting.
Imperfect endings rarely transcend big moments the way that
did. Most of the time the details just fade away. In other instances, they’ll
continue to nag at you, leaving you itching to rewrite the ending. When you can do something to alter those kinds
of endings, maybe you should.
The iPhone. President Barack Obama. The popularity of Taylor
Swift and Justin Bieber. NFL players Adrian Peterson and Calvin Johnson. The
debate over what happened in the finale of The Sopranos. None of these things existed
the last time I updated this blog. Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Boris
Yeltsin, and Anna Nicole Smith were still kicking. Hell, I probably visited MySpace
soon after I’d last clicked “publish.”
I never consciously made a decision to stop writing here.
I’d say it just gradually happened, but can not
doing something happen? In any event, I could pitch a number of reasons for the
decline of my recreational writing without resorting to hackneyed “I got so busy”
excuses. The efforts and energy put into my research (I know, I know, this
sounds like an “I got so busy,” but wait for it…) left me less than inspired to
spend my spare time typing in front of a computer screen when that’s what much
of my day job involved. I became more social and spent less time by myself (and
with my computer). My attention span weakened to the point that I became too
distractible to follow through with tasks that don’t work well on the
installment plan. Increased use of social media—by the public, colleagues, and
prospective employers—made me second-guess what I could/should relay online.
But probably the biggest, yet simplest, reason for the end
of my writing here is that my life changed. In most ways (read: Jenny and all
she is) this has been for the better, but no matter the changes, life is simply
different. Many aspects of my life have stabilized as I sprinted, jogged,
limped, danced, and strolled through my mid-to-late 20s and early 30s. In those
times I need to express myself, vent, or explore musings on the fly, I have a
wonderful partner as my go-to outlet.
This blog was written by an intermittently lonely guy, age
19-24, still finding himself. I liked that guy (though several parts of College
Anthony in particular make me cringe), but that version is not entirely around
anymore. It’s much like the way a picture of me from those days would only
resemble—and by no means represent—how I’d physically look in a picture today. I’m not
suggesting I’ve found myself and have life figured out, but the scope of that search has certainly changed. Slowly but surely, sitting for
hours to write in a blog no longer filled the purpose it once did.
We were sitting alone in the lounge of our loft apartment
building, two emptied bottles of homebrew sitting on a nearby end table. The
Psych finale was on the television, and we were watching to see how things
would end. At one point early on, Jenny giggled at something on the screen. I
felt butterflies in my chest, as I tend to experience whenever she does Jenny things. I don’t mean to trivialize what makes her great because
she’s an amazing, multi-talented, generous spirit of a woman, but it’s often
the little things like that that make me take a mental snapshot of how much her
partnership means to me.
The Psych finale was off to a promising start, which we were
admittedly surprised about given our feelings toward the shit in the
final season. Most of the time, perfect send-offs don’t happen. My dad’s final
words to me were, “I love you too.” About as perfect of final words as you can
imagine, right? Nonetheless, aside from the obvious fact that he left us way
too soon, even that was a flawed send-off since he'd lie unconscious for over 24
hours after those words.
I sometimes wonder if a “perfect ending” is even possible.
No matter how much we try to compartmentalize, life and events don’t occur in a
vacuum. Going back to my dad, there’s a moment in his final days that always
stuck with me. After bringing him outside to see our dog one last time, I was
guiding him in his wheelchair back to his hospital floor. As the elevator door
opened, I glanced toward the right wing of the floor, an area I hadn't explored. I’m sure I’d read the signs before, but I hadn’t really processed that over to the right was the baby delivery unit. I wondered how many lives had begun that
hour, that day, before turning my dad’s wheelchair to the left back to hospice. Within the same bubble, beginnings and endings were occurring in synchrony.
Jenny and I thoroughly enjoyed that hour of watching Psych
together. Once the finale actually finale’d, we looked at each other and smiled
in relief. Given that this was a show we'd followed over the years, we were invested in the send off. Jenny indicated she was happy with the episode, and I was glad to see the series wrap-up pleased her.
I felt similarly. I knew it wasn't a perfect ending, but it was way better than how it would have been if they hadn’t returned and wrapped things up in a fitting manner.
In my head I thought, “this will definitely do.”
I felt similarly. I knew it wasn't a perfect ending, but it was way better than how it would have been if they hadn’t returned and wrapped things up in a fitting manner.
In my head I thought, “this will definitely do.”
Eventually, we walked back to our apartment together, saying
hi to a ridiculously excited puppy and continuing the everydayness of our life
together.